About our slow living life
It’s with R.'s birth that I started becoming an aspiring minimalist. Maybe that was the moment in my life when I realized that what matters the most is what we live, the moments that we share with our loved ones, the adventures that we experience and not the things that we poses. I built up a whole philosophy of life around this concept of slow living and I can describe it through a lot of words.
Buy ethically made products. Support local brands and family businesses. The idea is to surround yourself with things that you resonate with. So I started looking for brands that are centered on simplicity and purity. Besides the fact that these small brands pay a lot of attention to details they are also consciously built, they are personal, familiar and friendly. And in the end I feel that besides owning a quality and timeless piece I will also end up gaining a friend and I have the joy of supporting a small business. This month I’ll be sharing the story of some of these brands and with that my round the world chase for sustainable goods and initiatives.
Grow you own food. Shop from the farmer’s market. Connect with nature. These concepts of minimalism and essentialism don’t only apply to material goods. It’s a lifestyle choice, with no ideal recipe and no strict norms, that doesn’t happen overnight. You have to learn to live with less, to focus on the foods that bring you joy and energy, to do reduce stress and come to believe that its ok to board, to have a day free of any plans and just do whatever you want.
In a world where everybody waits in line, with their shopping carts full, buying food in canes and XL boxes, at a huge supermarket isn’t it better to walk to the farmer’s market and get fresh products from local farmers? Or have your favorite bakery in the neighborhood and stop by for that crusty bread that you will eat with some goat cheese that the farmer just brought fresh? That, my friends, is happiness and it comes from these simple things.
And how about the smell of fresh tomatoes from the countryside? The joy on your child’s face when playing with day old chicks? As parents, we felt that in this digitalized world we want to teach our child to enjoy the magic of childhood, to play with rocks and sticks before ipads, to know that food doesn’t grow in the supermarket, to eat the strawberries that he picked himself, to walk barefoot and get dirty. A daily dose of happiness. And organized life. This might seem like a contradiction but in order to get to enjoy the things that you really like you must learn to prioritize and to delegate. Because living the simple life, doesn’t mean that you don’t have a job, a set of tasks and bills to pay. You do! But if you learn to keep stress at a minimum, to leave your job behind once you leave the office, you will eventually learn to live slowly.
The priorities for me are what I do before and after work. I live for our morning rituals and our slow evenings. I wake up early to enjoy a hot cup of coffee; we have breakfast together and listen to music. Sometimes we even stay in bed few minutes more just to cuddle. The evenings are also for shared meals, for long walks in the park, for movies and books and chilled wine.
Stress is still a part of our lives, of course. You cannot run from it as much as you try. But there’s nothing a bunch of flowers or a love note left on the fridge cannot solve. And somehow it all comes back to the same idea. We can live with less, if we live the things that really matter.